Medical Care
On Call
From January thru May of 2009, Dr. Ajak Abraham saw 10,108 patients at the Werkok Memorial Christian Hospital.
That is 2021 patients per month. Or 67 patients per day every day. In a 12 hour day, that translates to over five patients an hour.
That is an incredible amount of patients for a doctor who has to check his shoes for scorpions every morning.
“The circumstances can be very difficult (working in Werkok),” says Abraham, “but the people I see have been great. It’s motivating to continue to work hard for them.”
Dr. Abraham is a graduate of the Samaritan’s Purse Sudanese Physician Reintegration Program. Educated and trained in Cuba after fleeing war-torn Sudan as a child, Dr. Abraham arrived in Canada several years ago and completed medical upgrading at the University of Calgary in fall 2006 with the financial support and spiritual mentorship of Samaritan’s Purse Canada.
Dr. Abraham then participated in medical residencies in Kenya. In partnership with Samaritan’s Purse, Kenyan hospitals provided on-the-job training to him and 10 other Sudanese physicians, before they returned to Sudan.
“The training in Kenya was vital to the work that I do here,” says Abraham. “Our hospital lacks any x-ray facilities, laboratories or ultra-sound. So all of my diagnoses are done using clinical judgment that was honed in Kenya.”
The lack of facilities is not the only challenge facing Dr. Abraham. During the Sudanese rainy season, mud-plagued roads make the delivery of medical supplies and medicines almost impossible. Dr. Abraham is the only doctor at the hospital and, with the exception of occasional medical visitors, the only staff member with any medical training.
“I have no nurses or even a physician’s assistant at the hospital,” says Abraham. “I sometimes train local secondary students to give medications and bandage wounds. If I have to operate I use local anesthetics because I can’t monitor a patients vitals and operate.”
The most common ailments that Dr. Abraham sees are malaria, HIV/AIDS, and malnutrition, but Dr. Abraham sees many gunshot wounds, a reminder of south Sudan’s violent past.
“It is easy to get discouraged, practicing medicine here. If it were not for God working in my life, I would have quit to go work in a city somewhere. But God encourages me to continue on and to continue fighting for my people’s health. The work is hard but when you heal someone’s child, the smiles and the thanks are the greatest reward.”
Ways You Can Help
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Pray
Please pray that God will provide direction to Samaritan’s Purse, as we work with the University of Calgary and CIDA to rebuild and strengthen Southern Sudan’s medical system. |  | Give Facilities in Southern Sudan are dilapidated and dangerous and doctors need more training and equipment. Help us help them. Donate Here.
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